Fire: Personal Log

Hey friends, there have been some developments I'd like to tell you about. So I am writing this personal log.

Alright, buckle up, relax, and hold on tight... this will all seem a bit crazy. So you all know (from my last devlog) that I had got pretty sick for about a week straight and stayed in bed that whole time. And I didn't go into details, but I was sick a few times before that also. Most of this bullshit sickness is being brought on by stress from my full time job, our income headaches and bills, etc.

Now, I've also mentioned retirement. I can retire whenever I feel like I'm ready to. I have a 401k plan. My wife came up with a crazy solution to most of our problems. If we could pay off our house, her car, and our credit cards, we could survive off her income alone because we would just be paying light bill, phone bill, etc... I have more than enough in my 401k to pay off that shit (I've been with the company for 25 years). I just need to get in touch with them on Monday to try and estimate how much my 'lump sum' would be after taxes. If it really is enough to cover all that crap, then I may very well be retiring much sooner, like by the end of this year.

This decision also depends on how things go with my Patreon and SubscribeStar subs. Because, of course I would still want to have some kind of income coming in. I have a feeling though that being free from my full time job, giving me a lot more time to work on my games... this could only benefit me. A lot of subscribers will join for a month to get an update or to contribute (thanks!!!) and some will actually stay for a while. I'm not one to gamble, so if I do choose to retire early and use my 401k to pay off everything, it won't really matter too much as long as I don't lose a ton of subscribers all of a sudden. But I've seen where many will leave and give the reason that I wasn't active enough or too long between updates.

What would my retiring mean to you? Simple... I'd be working on my games a LOT more than before. I would work normal work hours on game stuff, and take time off in the evening like a normal person. And that is a whole lot better than the current situation - working full time job all day, then trying to use the evening time to hang out with wife, eat supper, watch some tv, then do some game work before bed. HUGE difference there. It will mean more updates... probably better content since I will have more time to 'perfect' things. I may actually be comfortable with giving you release dates, and more progress updates as well. I'll be a lot more active on discord and probably posting updates and other patreon content more often.

How can you help this situation? Easy... subscribe for a month, any tier. Get friends to. If my subs jump up quite a bit with this next release, that would be the perfect timing should I decide to let my boss know I plan to retire. I am hopeful that this Last Human update will be ready before the end of this month. Some extra subscribers (even for just a month) will boost my income a bit while we wait for our money to pay off things. But mostly, it will tell my wife that I can get folks to subscribe. She's the boss and this was actually her idea. But she needs to see that my little side-project doing this can actually grow.

I should know before the end of next week where I stand on all this and of course I'll keep you guys in the loop because retiring would be a really big deal. For now, I'll be spending the weekend trying to get more renders completed for the update. Thank you all for the support!

Love you all, ...Fire